French hostages plead for their lives

Two French journalists being held hostage in Iraq called on French President Jacques Chirac to save their lives by giving in to militants’ demands to rescind a headscarf ban, according to a video shown on the Al-Jazeera television station.

The video showed Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot looking unshaved and seated together in front of a mud wall with a small window above them.

Chesnot called on Chirac and his government to scrap its plan to ban the wearing of Islamic headscarves in public schools, according to the newsreader, who was interpreting his remarks into Arabic.

“I appeal to the French people to go to the streets … because our lives are threatened,” Malbrunot said in English.

Al-Jazeera broadcast an initial video on Saturday from a militant group calling itself The Islamic Army in Iraq, which gave the French government 48 hours to overturn the ban, but the station mentioned no threat against the men’s lives.

Al-Jazeera said today the group had extended its deadline, which would have ended late last night, for another 24 hours.

The video was aired hours after France vowed not to give in to the militants’ demand, and Foreign Minister Michel Barnier travelled to Cairo as part of a diplomatic drive to secure the hostages’ release.

He said his country respects all religions and human rights and noted that Muslim leaders in France also had called for the journalists’ release. Arab leaders have widely condemned the abduction.

The head scarf law goes into effect when school resumes in France on Wednesday.

It forbids public school students from wearing “conspicuous” religious apparel. Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses will also be banned, but the true target of the law are head scarves – seen by authorities as a sign of rising Muslim fundamentalism in France.

Chesnot of Radio France-Internationale, or RFI, and Malbrunot of Le Figaro newspaper and RTL radio disappeared on August 19 while apparently headed toward the holy city of Najaf.